Join us as we chronicle the lives of East Village red-tailed hawks, Christo, Dora, and Amelia, as well as other New York City wildlife.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Pigeon nightmare

I like to think that hawks are Nature's perfect killing machines, swiftly catching their prey and putting the victim out of its misery before it even knows what hit them. But, hawks are not perfect and they do make mistakes.

Today I saw Christo masterfully catch a pigeon out of the air, only to watch in horror as he failed to quickly kill it. He apparently had the pigeon by the foot and was unable to get a better grip, so he flew it to a tree and waited while it flapped around, trying in vain to escape.

The struggle went on for at least ten minutes and, for a moment, it looked like the pigeon was going to make it...